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My name is Brent ‘Brentonator’ McAhren and I'm part of the No More room in Hell team. I've come here in what has become a dead end struggle to get our 100% original content monetized on YouTube.

As it stands right now, we have been completely denied monetization on the majority of our popular videos with no method for appeals. Google reserves the final decision on all monetization requests.

We've tried multiple methods of refuting the baseless claims YouTube has made requiring "explicit permission to use the rights holder’s content commercially".

David ‘Dman’ Meade's attempts have been to thoroughly satisfy their requirements by posting contracts from team members who have produced content for us, including Garrett ‘ThoughT’ Lindquist’s soundtracks, etc. David’s detailed and thorough process resulted in our Steam launch trailer being denied monetization outright.

My attempt was to go another route and try to clarify that we are the original rights holders, giving full legal information for that including that our account representative is fully authorized. This resulted in Google requesting written permission from the original rights holders but, as our contracts state, and I just told them, we are original rights holders with the work being completed under contract.

Does anyone with more experience know a) how to appeal a monetization rejected claim, and b) how to get monetization approved for original content when we're repeatedly being denied despite fully countering their claims?

TL;DR Youtube won't let us monetize anything because we need rights from ourselves to monetize our videos (Yo dawg, I heard you like contracts).

This is what you do, submit your trailer as an ad for google ads, buy some ad space on google/youtube then you have a fixed point of undeniable ownership of the material and can upload and monetize the fuck out of those video trailers.

Unfortunately I don't have any good advice - but I do think it will mean things are going to get very interesting come January when most affiliate channels will have to go through this process to monetize their videos as well.

The time has come to move hosts. I reckon that is the only thing Google will understand, huge loss of content & then the loss of views will hit their attractiveness to advertisers and thus, their bottom line.

I don't know much about this field as I am just a consumer but Is there another hosting service that could handle the traffic? Could current Youtube content providers move to Vimeo or similar & have subscribers like myself follow them? I would leave Youtube in an instant if the people that I follow left. Is there a good alternative?

This is the only real way I can see of putting pressure on Youtube/Google.

Could this be the perfect time for someone like the Imgur guy to set up a new hosting service and gain a large market share?

Youtube is a monopoly, and monopolies are extremely tough to combat (without government interference). You not only get into technical issues, but also all the legal issues that youtube is struggling with right now. Then you have added stress on getting people to trust and use this new service. It's a whole lot of uphill climbing that could be effectively made useless if YouTube starts a major reform.

I currently work for someone who has their own solution for this problem. I'm about to throw up a self post soon about the details, but we really hope we'll be the ones applying pressure on Google and the like to soften up on this, or risk losing this business entirely.

If anyone out there is a Let's Player or Reviewer with Youtube problems, PM me and I'll send you the site owner's contact info. And yes, we will be offering monetization options.

My one gripe with them is their butt ugly site. If they did something like vimeo where it looks nice then I would actually look for videos on dailymotion but no, instead they have some monkey doing color choices and layout.

I understand if they are a small site just starting up, but they've been here a few good years and even want to compete with youtube. A youtube competitor has to not only be better technologically, but aesthetically as well. I mean, their player looks atrocious!

Blip's player is horrid, but it's likely the second best option for this sort of thing if content creators need to jump ship. It's a bit better than DailyMotion, and I don't think Vimeo does monetization.

On a slower connection like mine it tends to load slower than the video plays, so there's a lot of waiting. Youtube doesn't usually have that issue for me. Though the plus side to Blip is that it does buffer while paused.

Also Blip's player stops adblock as of the last time I saw it. The video just refuses to play for 90 seconds if you have it enabled. Personally I just disabled it and dealt with the 10 second KFC advert.

And there were other software and OS manufacturers and all that other shit Microsoft did before the government forced them to break up. Monopoly does not necessarily mean 100% control, it just means control in a way that prohibits other entries into the field in a fair manner.

To lessen the load on their servers and reduce lag in the wake of new console streaming features creating extra traffic. So it's not without reason, but it's a terrible change for those streamers who forgo a delay to chat with their viewers in real time.

A month or two ago, GameSpot changed its site. Among the problems that arose, they did add a proprietary video player. It doesn't compress near as much as YouTube and it runs at 60 frames per second.

I don't see it happening, but if the YouTube gaming community could move to a website like this, with better quality and functionality, I can see it doing well. But, like I said, I can't see that taking off.

This could work, as long as they remember to reach out and touch base with their target audience; with emphasis on identifying potential pain-points for the end user experience in regards to the chosen medium.

Well then you hit the other recent snag - in the past week Twitch has introduced a prohibitive new stream delay system that's making every single user and streamer on the site bitch profusely. Anyone who wants to have any sort of interaction with their stream is now permanently on at least a minute and sometimes longer delay.

Yep, my favorite part was where when stage6 (divx video host) shut down, they explicitly directed all their customers to vimeo. Stage6 was a really good host for videos in way higher quality than youtube at the time, and so a good deal of gamers put videos there. Then they moved to vimeo, as suggested/instructed. Aaaaand then vimeo decided they didnt want gamers, started deleting videos, and said they only host "artful videos" when I sent an email inquiring about the issue. Sounded like a bunch of stuck up douchebags to me.

Honestly, it seems like the only company with the resources and incentive to make a competing video alternative is Amazon. They have massive amounts of existing hosting power through through their cloud services and prime instant video, viewership data could only help them in selling you more stuff, and in the case of any kind of review they could directly link you to purchasing it on amazon.

It would fit in with their Prime strategy, where they spend a good chunk of money up front to suck people into buying stuff from them in the long run, they could write off the initial start up costs in order to steal customers from google down the line.

They also have dealt with all the content issues before with streaming so they would have a leg up on any non google/apple/netflix type company, and have a huge team of people who focus on customer support and could provide that human touch on content ID that google and youtube seem to be lacking these days.

Without a lot of money coming in to a competing video service, I think the only hope is a peer-to-peer based service. The 720p version of this trailer is 31.2 MB. The FLV (240p) is 5.7 MB. You could easily upload those on a normal home connection.

The infrastructure would be this:

Private torrent tracker software. Gazelle is an obvious choice.

Everyone must maintain a certain upload/download ratio in order to continue using the service. This assumes that there are no content delivery network servers helping serve video - it's 100% the job of the users.

Interesting does not even begin to describe what will happen. It will be a clusterfuck. ContentID flat out does not work. People will be getting flags out of nowhere and it will mean there will be a HUGE backlash from content creators. To the extent that YouTube might actually listen to us this time, but I really doubt it.

ContentID flat out does not work. People will be getting flags out of nowhere

Then they'll get the claim dismissed, only to have the same people, submit the same claim on the same video all over again. I think it was itmeJP or Angry Joe who tweeted today that they have a 3rd claim on a video that was cleared twice. This whole thing is so close to a "fuck it, launch the nukes" solution by Google that it almost seems like they want it to crash and rebuild something new.

They've still got the old Google Video IP kicking around, and they're really pushing to get people to use Google+ (Which allows for video uploads that aren't stored on YouTube)... Makes me wonder if they're not going to try to kill off the YouTube brand and introduce "Google+ Video" next year.

Google seemingly asinine obsession with integrating everything with G+ is really using up all of their good will.

Googles biggest failure has been the complete lack of disconnect between all the different services they provide. They've bought out or developed all sorts of things, and then just left them to rot individually.

Bringing it all together is a good thing, but the haphazard and half-arsed way in which they do it - which is how they seemingly approach everything - is only confusing people and making them angry.

I think they're trying to tie everything together with their Android platform, and the way they're going about it is G+. Look at the Nexus 5 phone, it doesn't even have a messenger app, just hangouts. They want to make G+ the centralized login for all their services so when you use those services on your phone, shit just "works".

For phone users? Great. For those of us who want to use those services on PC? Fuck us, right?

This shit is reaching critical mass and I honestly hope everyone flees from youtube to an alternative and the entire site sinks itself. It's been getting shittier and shittier and now they're just alienating the people who made the site successful.

Vimeo doesn't allow videogame content unless you're a developer, and is actively moderated to prevent it becoming the next YouTube. Also, you can only upload one HD video per month without the right account.

Blip has a focus on reliability, quality show content, and while it has great options for monetization there is currently no way to register a new producer account.

Flickr allows you to upload two 90-second videos per month and that alone.

Twitch is gradually getting worse on the streaming front, and still no plans to allow uploaded videos.

Veoh is only available in Europe and North America.

DailyMotion has a horrible front page layout that appeals more to the Pinterest crowd than the Youtubers, and is rather slim on features.

The only real valid alternative is hosting your own website, running your own adverts and monetization, then paying for a video hosting service like Viddler to have your actual video content so you can embed directly - and even then you're relying on people finding your site by word-of-mouth or your own existing fanbase being willing to make the switch - if you can provide a service they're happy with. Unless you're already well established, you're just going to waste your money and fizzle out.

Dailymotion allows videogame content and no limit to HD uploads > Vimeo doesn't allow videogame content unless you're a developer, and is actively moderated to prevent it becoming the next YouTube. Also, you can only upload one HD video per month without the right account.

Dailymotion lets you register official accounts > Blip has a focus on reliability, quality show content, and while it has great options for monetization there is currently no way to register a new producer account.

Dailymotion has no limit > Flickr allows you to upload two 90-second videos per month and that alone.

Dailymotion allows streaming > Twitch is gradually getting worse on the streaming front, and still no plans to allow uploaded videos

Dailymotion is available everywhere > Veoh is only available in Europe and North America.

Is that all that's stopping you? There is a right hand rail that keeps you up to date on subscriptions way better than youtube, once you subscribe around. What features are missing? > DailyMotion has a horrible front page layout that appeals more to the Pinterest crowd than the Youtubers, and is rather slim on features.

I think DailyMotion has a reputation (at least, from where I'm sitting) of being a shitty YouTube where you can find mirrors of street fights. Or maybe I'm thinking of leakvids. Or vidleaks. Either way, that's indicative of the site not doing something right to present itself as a worthy alternative.

I'm guessing your talking about Liveleak? And I agree, DailyMotion has the reputation of being loaded with low quality videos that are being watched by practically no one. And it's loaded with softcore porn, BUT that may just be my browsing habits haha.

An example of the low viewership that I found was the channel Lore, which is at a comfortable level of popularity. On YouTube they have 525,131 subscribers, while on DailyMotion, they have a whopping 43 followers. And on one of their most recent videos "Pokemon X and Y Lore in a Minute!" there are 297,326 views on YT and 8 on DM. Their most single viewed video on each platform have 3,733,111 and 6,878 views (guess which one is which).

Just looked at it and it looks very similar to Youtube. Only the comments are not automatically displayed. Making the change should be no problem. If a lot of followers are on Youtube just make announcement videos.

The only option was to use an addon for firefox that messed with your cookies and tricked the site into thinking you have only watched a certain amount of time. And honestly the only memory I have of megavideo was being frustrated watching hitman reborn many years ago and having to fiddle with setting to watch more than 3 episodes.

The important part is that it's impossible for MediaCrush to sell out. Because anyone can set up a copy of the site, it's trivial for someone to put up a version of the site as it looked and worked before we did anything stupid like Content ID.

We've tried contacting a few YouTubers who have cried out against YouTube's changes, but they're all very inaccessible and it's tough. We want to give you guys our stuff!

Mm, doesn't take into account the massive bandwidth cost of steaming all of that video to the viewers. YouTube can do this because they're huge, they do it in bulk, and they have special deals in place. Individual creators? Not so much.

This also misses the importance of YouTube's large ad inventory. On YouTube, you can get to put on your videos (and money from that placement) without having to do the manual sales work yourself. Most creators would have trouble trying to scrape up anything close to the monetization ability YouTube offers.

We (smaller YouTube channels) probably wouldn't host the video directly. What we would probably do is just embed (ironically enough) YouTube videos onto our own website and display ads provided by a third party (such as Adsense) next to the videos.

The second part I agree with, these new ads will not make nearly as much as the ones currently on YouTube.

DailyMotion has a horrible front page layout that appeals more to the Pinterest crowd than the Youtubers, and is rather slim on features.

I'm sure YouTube with its beyond-shitty Google+ mandated comments system is better?

Vimeo doesn't allow videogame content unless you're a developer, and is actively moderated to prevent it becoming the next YouTube. Also, you can only upload one HD video per month without the right account.

Actually, they allow video game machinima too.

Blip has a focus on reliability, quality show content, and while it has great options for monetization there is currently no way to register a new producer account.

If they allow the Day[9] Daily and all of Sean Plott's non-Daily related Let's Plays, I'm sure they'll allow a partnered YouTuber like Nerd3 to join the site provided he does meaningful content and not just lazy LPs. I would also assume you gotta contact them directly for access due to the amount of utter shit they had to remove from their site prior.

Flickr allows you to upload two 90-second videos per month and that alone.

Flickr should not be considered.

Veoh is only available in Europe and North America.

I'm a Brit, Veoh is geo-blocked for me.

Twitch is gradually getting worse on the streaming front, and still no plans to allow uploaded videos.

Actually, a recent update to video encoding on their site made streams actually watchable in Europe in 480p+ without horrendous lag and frame-rape.

If they allow the Day[9] Daily and all of Sean Plott's non-Daily related Let's Plays, I'm sure they'll allow a partnered YouTuber like Nerd3 to join the site provided he does meaningful content and not just lazy LPs. I would also assume you gotta contact them directly for access due to the amount of utter shit they had to remove from their site prior.

The only problem with that mentality is that it completely rules out new channels from being formed. New guy wanting to make a start with no following? Shit out of luck.

Also, it's likely that the average person who surfs YouTube doesn't necessarily understand what's happening right now or that they aren't even aware that this is happening right now. Honestly, if it weren't for reddit, I probably wouldn't even know it was affecting guys like this.

The average person who visits YouTube probably just goes to see a video that a friend recommended or to listen to music. There's most likely not enough people willing to leave YouTube to make the impact that you guys are hoping for.

youtube has 1 billion user each month. It could upset ten million users -- hell, not just upset, but get them so mad that they jump ship entirely and leave for greener pastures, and that'd still only be 1% of their monthly unique visits.

A couple of the more well known creators whining unfortunately does absolutely fucking nothing. It not even in the same state as statistically relevant.

I disagree with this fatalistic view. If you look at the top 100 channels on YouTube, about 10 of them are gaming-related. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that 10% of YT users can be reached by the outrage.

100 million gamers might sound like a lot, but 170 million Americans alone play video games, so 100 million is a perfectly good figure.

I see what you're saying, but a lot of those users don't watch many videos. In that statistic, the user who watches 10 music videos a month counts as much as the gamer who watches 50 5-10 minute videos + 10 hours of let's plays per month. And a lot of those top channels are gaming related.

Given that, it may be time to contact a lawyer. If it seems that they are denying you, despite you meeting all of their demands, and despite not denying others that meet those demands, then you may have a case. They are freely allowed to turn you down as a business partner, but they appear to be lying to you about the reasons (or at the very least not following their own legal guidelines).

That's basically just theft isn't it? Who is getting all this money. I wonder are publishers like Blizzard, who have their content claimed without their knowledge, receiving the extra money or is google literally defrauding thousands of people for their own gain.

I would also say,be careful that you don't have multiple "official" YouTube ID's posting this stuff. The reason I say this is because having multiple ID's that are official can lead to false flags until you verify every individual YouTube account as official.

Unfortunately, we haven't had any Content ID matches or strikes. This is Youtube denying us the ability to monetize based on what they see as a lack of "explicit permission to use the rights holder’s content commercially".

This might seem a bit odd, and you've probably done so, but have you tried writing up a permission to use statement from yourself? Essentially pretend to be two legal entities, the youtube channel and the game creator. The game creator then gives permission for the youtube channel to monetize the content. They want written permission from the rightsholder? Give it to em. Obtaining it should be as simple as writing it down.

There usually isn't a human checking up on it at Google's end. Otherwise this would probably be taken care of already. As awesome as Google is, they have the worst customer service I've ever experienced.

That may not be true. So far as I can tell, they don't have customer service. There aren't email addresses, phone numbers, anything. The only thing I've ever spoken to someone at Google about was a defective Chromecast.

We've been pretty encompassing with showing them here's the contributor who made the music, here is their contract, here is X for X, etc. We've also just tried a go to our website to verify this and that.

We're working on getting a document signed today that releases all YouTube accounts, basically a more professional version of static.nmrih.com/videopolicy

Interesting. Just in case you didn't see it, make sure you check my edit. I'm assuming they have a "not allowed" circle with a slash sign in your video manager for your video. I hope Google eventually gets back to you.

As it stands right now, we have been completely denied monetization on the majority of our popular videos with no method for appeals. Google reserves the final decision on all monetization requests.

We've tried multiple methods of refuting the baseless claims YouTube has made requiring "explicit permission to use the rights holder’s content commercially".

Please tell me you are not surprised. Google's deafness to its customers is widely known from say people's interaction with adsense, and similar (from way before youtube got so popular). Basically Google doesn't give a fuck about the individuals. To them individuals are just numbers. As long as their business is still generating money, their policy is to ignore what they see as spurious requests and complaints. Unless there is a million of you who all make the same exact demand simultaneously or you file a strong and costly law suit against Google, they won't give two shits about you. Google is a machine. It's inhuman. This was widely known to anyone who's paid any attention. Google is not a trustworthy partner for small business.

I'm reminded of the business who lost their Google Voice number at this time. I believe someone on Reddit or a Googler on Reddit found the post and was able to correct it, but this took months to resolve for them.

At least for Nexus devices they have a phone number with good support policies.

Not in my experience. I sent my Nexus 5 back to them for a refund in mid-November and have yet to receive my refund.

Their policy states that once they receive the device it can take up to 14 business days to process the refund (this is just pure bullshit to begin with). It has been 25 business days and still no sign of my money. I have called 3 times and they assured me each time it would be there by the end of that business day.

It is infuriating the number of stories like this, or of being refused because you have content that you've paid for the rights to use. To top it all off Google doesn't seem to care one bit! With the number of people who have made YouTube their fulltime job this is incredibly irresponsible and frankly not what I would have expected from them. This is the sort of massive screw up that could tank a company or platform if there was any real competition in this particular market.

Agreed. YouTube has become the Microsoft of operating systems, we can't call it a monopoly as there are technically other systems out there, but regardless if you like it or not your requirements and expectations may show your really only allowed one choice.

It's great to have a central hub of content and search-ability (YouTube) but at the end of the day people don't visit because they want content, but rather they expect it. The content consumers (random people like myself) can't be looked at for a solution because as long as the developers they seek keep using the same system we WILL keep visiting. Heck this whole thing is about ad revenue but so many carry ad blocker nullifying their entire care on the subject.

To the OP: I'll be honest, I never heard of you. I'm looking you up now but I only know about this because I got linked here by TB's Twitter. I'll openly say if he, Husky, and a few other faces I look for up and stopped using YouTube then I'll still use it, I look up lots of stuff there, but that's a major time sink gone.

There's two ways this thing can end if content providers started going elsewhere: They find (or grow) a community that is fair and tolerant of generating revenue for the work they put in, leaving YouTube to question itself. YouTube could be utterly ecstatic that those individuals have walked away, or they could regret themselves. If the former, then the developers have certainly made the right decision, while the later hopes then that YouTube will adapt policies that are more appropriate. Either way, people will go where the content is.

David ‘Dman’ Meade's attempts have been to thoroughly satisfy their requirements by posting contracts from team members who have produced content for us, including Garrett ‘ThoughT’ Lindquist’s soundtracks, etc. David’s detailed and thorough process resulted in our Steam launch trailer being denied monetization outright.

Google won't even accept the contracts that proves that all the assets for the game were made by the people who made for No More Room's game.

I bet even if you contacted a company who then sent youtube written permission that you can monetize their content in your video, they would maybe remove the claim but then it would just be re-claimed a week later.

Chances are it won't help, so see if they'll do it on the stipulation that they'll get paid for their time should their efforts be successful. I know that sounds shady and lowball, but I've done it before and the lawyers I worked with have always been met with success, so I've always paid them.

TL;DR have your lawyer email youtube legal a letter, and I paid some lawyers once

Are you the type of person who would date a pretty person even if they abused you and called you names and acted like you were an insignificant piece of shit before you would date the not so good looking sweet person?

At this point it's probably wise to reach out to other copyright owners in the same situation (there's been a few recently, mainly people who made videogame soundtracks irl) and make a class act for what seems like a breach of contract on youtube's part, as you're supposed to be able to monetize content you're the copyright holder of.

I myself have encountered this many times with my own 100% original content too. Honestly there's not much you can do, they don't care, sometimes you just get someone with their head up their a*** who has no idea what they're talking about.

So someone start a video game website that competes with google. I know everyone likes to complain about this youtube copyright stuff but Google doesn't care. It's not going to hurt their bottom line by .00001%.

Unless they have a reason financially to go to the trouble of making sure videos are legit and not breaking copyright they aren't going to do it. Why take the chance of EA or another company suing them for tens of millions of dollars because a bunch of people put up videos and the uploaders and google made advertisement money on someone elses content.

I know this is different and you own the content but Google has drawn a line in the sand and what you gave them didn't meet the standards they set for proof. It really does suck. However there are a lot of people who own content having the same problem.

Someone with some brains and friends come up with a business plan and make a kickstarter for a video hosting site for gamers by gamers. I'll donate what I can, even if I never make a video for it.

Seriously guys if there is ever going to be a time to make a competitor to youtube this is it. The one moment in time where there is the traction and support from the community to get it going. Who knows it might just make Google back off of their idiotic high horse and let people make money on their videos again.

Or have a manual report system where only authorized copyright holders can make a report. If a report is reviewed to be false, the account is penalized, holding them back for a short time, to prevent automated report carpet bombing.

Welcome to the club, buddy. I had exactly the same problem when I wanted to upload speedpaints of mine to youtube. It's like the system would just not understand that somehow I could be the owned of ip created by myself :(

Obviously I said it when disputing it. It was obviously denied. I appealed to it again. It was denied.

Still, it shows how wrong the system is. I was showing a recording of me making the painting, you can't go further than that as far as "proof of ownership" goes I think. This whole youtube affair just makes me so very very sad.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to confirm that you have the necessary rights to commercially use all the text in your comment from the information you've given us, so we ask that you provide written documentation substantiating your claim.

Unfortunately, your use of the letters a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,k,l,m,n,o,p,r,s,t,u,v,w,x and y in the above comment is in violation of intellectual property and copyright laws. Please provide proof of licensing, or your comment may be deleted.

Seriously this, actually might be precisely what they want. They may not feel able to say it if they feel it comes too close to "legal advice". It is safer for them legally to just say the same cryptic thing over and over and hope you crack the code than to tell you what to do.